by John Creasey
‘Hm-hm?’
‘The danger comes after dark,’ said Loftus soberly.
He went downstairs to the telephone—a call-box in the hotel—and phoned Craigie. For the past hour he had been expecting word from Oundle, and he hoped that Craigie would have some news. Apart from a report from a Bournemouth agent that Oundle had sent out a radio call for help, and was getting it, there was no news. Loftus felt his anxiety rising, remembering the ruthlessness of the attacks so far and the thoroughness of Ned Oundle. If it were possible to get word through, Ned would do it.
Just what did his silence mean?
Loftus tried to force the thought to the back of his mind, but failed. He was very uneasy indeed.
• • • • •
From the moment that Loftus had snapped the order to get outside and follow the Lagonda, Ned Oundle had been active. Too active, he considered. He took most things as they came, but too much had come too quickly.
To reach the front door and to be faced with the explosion had been bad enough in itself. Oundle, with a split-second in which to act, had retreated along the wide hallway of the flats and, since the bomb had exploded at the first-floor level, had felt nothing more than the wind. Outside, the Talbot had been in going order, although damaged. He had contrived to get in the wake of the Lagonda, after seeing the man in black push the other in grey along and then jump from the rear to the driving-seat.
The chase had led, leisurely enough, through Bournemouth.
Within three minutes Oundle had radioed his request for help to the local agents. He had proposed to keep the Lagonda in sight until one of the others had caught him up; the other, in a car which Pale-face would not recognise, would do the following.
Excellent, thought Oundle, in theory.
He had actually seen a Department car—rather a Lancia—driven by one Wally Davidson, whom he knew well. And within three minutes he had seen Wally swerve across the road to avoid a pedestrian, and crash into a shop window. He would have to keep on the tail of the Lagonda until his second man arrived.
He did not arrive.
Oundle followed the Lagonda, still at a leisurely pace, along the Christchurch-Lyndhurst road. Pale-face was inexplicable, for he drove across and about the New Forest, from Lyndhurst to Ringwood, Ringwood to Fordingbridge, back to Cadnam, Cadnam to Romsey and then back to Brockenhurst. There the man in black and his companion, who apparently was not badly hurt, had stopped for lunch.
Oundle’s disquiet increased when, after lunch—and about the time that Loftus had started for London—Pale-face and his companion left the small hotel, and started driving again. From Brockenhurst they went along the Christchurch road, apparently back towards Bournemouth.
The Lagonda was travelling at something under forty, when it suddenly drew away from the Talbot. In a few seconds its speed doubled, and a few hundred yards ahead at cross-roads with trees and high hedges lining them.
The Lagonda disappeared.
Oundle swore, coming as he did on the cross-roads without much warning, and tried to see which way the other car had turned. He saw the back of it, towards the right, swung the wheel and took the corner on two wheels.
The road was narrow and winding.
It led, Oundle believed, towards Burley, and in a few minutes, driving across barren countryside and with the Lagonda in clear sight, he saw the skeleton of the Territorial camp which had been dismantled at the beginning of the war. It was Burley, then.
The Lagonda kept its distance.
Both cars must be running low on petrol, and Oundle felt anxious lest he was the first to run out. He could not stop for refuelling, although he carried ample ration-vouchers in his pocket, unless Pale-face did the same.
Then an Austin Seven came towards him.
The small car seemed miles away when he first sighted it, but he was level more quickly than he realised—and then he heard the tap-tap-tap from the back of the small car, saw the yellow flame preceding machine-gun bullets, and felt the impact of them on the battered offside wing. He did not try to slow down or swerve, but drove straight on. He felt both surprise and relief when he found the four wheels holding the road.
He glanced behind him.
The Austin had stopped, and was turning in the middle of the road. The Lagonda was moving as fast as ever, close to Burley village. It swung right, however, and started to go across the common again. Oundle had to follow.
With the Lagonda in front, and the Austin behind.
The road was winding a great deal with steep banks on either side. It was difficult to operate the radio-transmitter, but the circumstances made it imperative. One-handed, he switched on; but he heard no atmospherics, the instrument sounded dead.
It was dead.
The aerial was carried on the running-board, and with a sickening sense of hopelessness Oundle realised that it had been shot through. He was alone, there seemed no other traffic on that road leading across the forest except the Austin on his tail and the Lagonda ahead of him. Dusk was beginning to fall despite the early hour, and was made worse by heavy banks of cloud coming from the sea.
Darkness. Black-out.
Could these people see in the dark?
Was that the object of the long, apparently senseless run? Had the Lagonda driver been keeping him at a distance in order to make use of the darkness?
‘It looks,’ said Oundle aloud, ‘just like that. And perhaps, Bill, you’ll tell me what to do if the Lagonda stops suddenly.’
Loftus was a long way off.
Pale-face was uncomfortably near, and so were the occupants of the Austin. It came to Oundle that the machine-gunning had been intended to get his aerial and miss the tyres and him—that he had been lured deliberately into this position, on one of the wildest parts of the New Forest, so that darkness should fall.
And in darkness—what?
9
By Messenger
Ned Oundle believed that he knew the New Forest well, but until that day he had known nothing of the loneliness of some parts of it, and had not realised that there was so little traffic, that there were such extensive stretches of moorland, bleak and wild, relieved neither by trees nor ponies. He was not sure what part of the Forest he had reached, for twisting and turning corners at speed had made it impossible for him to read the signposts. The last village had been Burley, but that meant little.
‘And this,’ said Oundle to himself as he coasted along behind a Lagonda at little more than thirty, ‘means less. I wonder what they’d do if I tried to pass them?’
He spurted; but the Lagonda drew away, while the Austin contrived to keep within easy distance.
Oundle faced the facts philosophically. By a cunning manoeuvre he had been stranded—and his chief problem was deciding whether to try to get away, or to wait for developments. His inclination, now that he was used to the prospect of a forced meeting with Pale-face by dark, was to wait; on the other hand, he needed to get word through to Loftus.
Then Oundle discovered a further angle in the ingenuity of Pale-face. The Lagonda slowed down whenever it neared cross-roads or side turnings, and the Austin gathered speed. At those moments little more than forty yards covered all three cars. Oundle tightened his lips after passing three turnings, and then swung the wheel for the fourth.
The Austin was no more than ten yards behind.
Even as he turned the wheel, Loftus heard the ominous tap-tap-tap of the Tommy-gun which was being used against him, and felt the impact of the bullets on the body-work. He was not hurt, but if he persisted in his effort to swing off the road he would be. He straightened the wheel, and the gunning stopped.
Oundle wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
The bank of clouds was now above him. Northwards there was a strip of comparatively clear sky, shedding a little light, but for the most part the sky was overcast, and dusk was premature. He switched on the lights permitted by law; the Lagonda did the same, as did the Austin.
The darkness wo
rsened until it was only just possible to see the hedges and, here and there, a tree which was no more than a vague, skeleton shape against the sky. The red light of the Lagonda showed occasionally ahead of him, the faint white light from the Austin was behind. His own dimmed headlights showed on a few yards of road ahead of him.
Then, abruptly, his engine missed fire. The car ran for a few yards, but the engine missed again and stopped completely. Tight-lipped, Oundle sat back in his seat. His right hand was in his pocket, tight about the butt of a gun. But he knew that it would be of little use. He could see nothing beyond the range of the headlights, while the others probably could see in the darkness.
The red light of the Lagonda was no longer visible, nor was the whiter light of the Austin. Darkness and silence surrounded him, the quiet of the night seemed a menace in itself.
‘I think,’ Oundle said in a voice very unlike his own, ‘that I’ll take a walk.’
‘I disagree,’ said a voice from behind him.
Oundle started. He had heard and seen nothing, but a man was within a yard of him. He turned his head, but the voice came again, sharply.
‘Switch off your lights.’
Oundle hesitated, but obeyed.
The blackness was complete, and he could see nothing even when he turned his head and tried to locate the speaker. He felt the utter hopelessness of his position, and yet had one reassuring thought. Had they intended to do murder, they would have shot him by now.
‘Remember,’ said the speaker softly, ‘that I can see you perfectly, Oundle, as well as if it were daylight. You will do precisely what I tell you, or you will not live to do another thing. Now! Get out of your car on the far side.’
Oundle opened the door, finding the handle by touch. He would not have believed such utter darkness possible. It seemed to envelop him like a shroud. He shivered, and it was not entirely due to the cold, although a wind was whistling across the moors.
He reached the roadway.
He stopped abruptly, for from the darkness an invisible hand gripped his right wrist, and his hand was drawn from his pocket, his fingers prised away from the butt of his gun. Other hands ran over him from head to foot, and a second automatic which he carried in a shoulder holster was removed. He could feel the hands but could not see them.
His heart beat fast.
‘Come with me,’ said a man gruffly.
It was not the first speaker, and there was an accent in the second voice which suggested that the man was ill-educated, but as English as Oundle. A hand gripped his forearm and the man at his side walked sharply and steadily along the road. His escort walked as firmly and surely as he would have done by day.
‘All right, stop,’ growled the other. ‘All ready, sir?’
‘Both of you get in.’ It was the softer voice this time, and although he could not be sure, Oundle believed it to be from Pale-face. But Oundle had little time for thinking, for he was helped into a car—almost certainly the Lagonda—and his escort sat beside him. Something hard was pressed against his ribs.
In darkness and without lights the car started smoothly.
Oundle felt it taking corners, and travelling round bends, but there was nothing he could see ahead of him, and his sense of the uncanny increased, grew almost frightening. Now and again, when the lights of an approaching car were seen, the driver switched on—but that was rare, for the most part it was a ghost car, travelling through a blackness which no normal man could have negotiated. It was uncanny, yes, and even frightening—but it was fascinating.
But like all things, it grew monotonous. He had no idea how long he had been travelling, but suddenly the car swung on to a main road, and traffic was comparatively thick. Lights were everywhere, and those of the Lagonda were on all the time. The pressure against his ribs increased, a further warning.
The Lagonda turned off the road and ran on for perhaps five minutes, then stopped. The driver climbed out, and Oundle heard the creaking of gates as they opened. The lights were off again, but they went along a drive swiftly, and pulled up slowly.
‘Get out,’ ordered the man next to him.
Oundle obeyed, stumbling on the gravel. He regained his balance as the man with the thin voice said sharply:
‘You have seen a demonstration, Oundle, which should satisfy you that you are quite helpless. Go back to Loftus, and tell him what has happened. Tell him to withdraw his men from the Graftons, Warncliffe and Grey. Tell him he is doing no good by fighting, but only harm. You understand?’
‘Ye-es.’ Oundle was so startled and at the same time so relieved that he stared through the darkness like a man dumbstruck.
• • • • •
To the village of Grayling, in Hampshire, a section of the Home Office had been evacuated during the first days of the war, and there taken root. The Manor House, which had long been on the market, had been bought—not rented—by a generous Government, and in the locality scurrilous tongues suggested that a house which had been unsaleable during peace-time had been bought at an extravagant price by a Government Department, one of whose officials was a first-cousin of the owner.
Such things, of course, were only whispered.
Moreover, as the weeks had passed, the scurrilous tongues ceased to wag—and with good reason. Grayling was a small village, with only half a dozen shops and two hostelries. What few county folk lived near by did a little hunting, a little fishing in the Tess, and considerable shooting in the extensive rough-land. They omitted, however, to patronise the Grayling shops, and bought either from Winchester or London. The villagers and the farmers from nearby gave what prosperity there was in Grayling until the war.
The outrageous purchase of the Manor House was at first a topic of conversation, and then of satisfaction. For it was a large building, with some twenty-one bedrooms, and others for servants—and a large staff was brought down from Whitehall. Grayling woke up one autumn morning to find its population increased by nearly a hundred souls—mostly youthful souls. Beer was sold in far greater quantities than ever before, cigarettes were out of stock within three days, other sales increased in proportion. Moreover, the controlling official, Sir Arbuthnot Wilson, gave instructions to the resident cook that what purchases could be bought locally should be.
Grayling thrived.
Grayling, in fact, was ninety-eight per cent solid for the Government, and the only remaining Socialist was the local vagrant-cum-poacher-cum-oldest inhabitant, none other than Sammy Doe.
Sammy was a practising Socialist rather than a political one, and had no genuine reason for complaint. But he did complain, and he talked at the Green Swan of the outrages of the Government, and the fact that Sir Arbuthnot Wilson ought to be shot—and lo! on a raw morning in early spring Sammy Doe stumbled across a body.
A dead body.
None other than Sir Arbuthnot Wilson’s, who had been shot.
It did credit to Sammy that he went immediately to the police and admitted that he had been snaring rabbits—or more accurately collecting them after setting his snares the previous night—when he had discovered the body lying beneath a pile of leaves in a little-used covert half a mile from the Manor House. The local police had summoned those from Winchester, and there had been much ado before the search party which started out to look for evidence or clues, discovered a second body.
This time it was of Lord Horley, District Commissioner for Home Defence for the Mid-Southern area—a murder likely to arouse even greater sensation than that of Wilson’s. At first stunned by the importance of their discoveries, the Winchester police had delayed contacting Scotland Yard, with the result that an obscure agent of Craigie’s had heard of the killings, discovered both men had died from bullet wounds in the temple, and had advised Craigie. Both wounds had been caused by small-bore guns of the air type.
Craigie told Loftus this, and:
‘There’s no apparent reason for either murder. Both men were well known and reputable, and it looks as if they might have been kill
ed as an example of the efficiency of this new weapon. But it’s our job. You’ve a carte blanche with the locals. Get down at once, will you?’
‘Yes,’ said Loftus, who had been in London for no more than half an hour. ‘Anything from Oundle yet?’
‘No. Wally had a car smash just after sighting him in Bournemouth, and Carruthers missed him somehow.’
‘Huh. You’ll phone me if word comes through.’
‘Of course,’ said Craigie.
Loftus nodded, and went out. Craigie looked at the door as it slid to—operated from a button-panel on Craigie’s desk, for no man could get into that long room without Craigie knowing—with his eyes narrowed and worried.
The killing in darkness was desperately worrying.
Why was it happening? Why kill an unknown alien, an Englishman with a list of a dozen convictions for petty crimes—that was the man who had followed Loftus from Scotland Yard—and, above all, why kill Wilson and Lord Horley?
The police had failed to make progress.
They had not been able to identify the alien, and the billiards chalk clue had so far been useless. The other man, known for some obscure reason as Harry the Bat, had been released from his ticket-of-leave obligations three months before, and as far as the police had known, had led a blameless life thereafter. But he had followed Loftus in the dark—and been killed apparently because he had allowed Loftus to realise that.
But why?
The weapon itself could be deadly enough, but why was it being used in these ‘small’ murders? Craigie would have preferred it had there been some obvious reason, had any of the dead men been concerned with espionage, or even with the War Office. The attempt to reconcile what seemed like ‘private’ crimes with the existence of a weapon which would be invaluable in the war was the difficult task.
No further news had come from Vania.
No word, for that matter, had come from any source about the invention which countered darkness. That developments were brewing was certain—and Loftus was as worried as Gordon Craigie when he went downstairs from the Department Office, using the side entrance from the big building and then turning left into Whitehall.